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Ribbon Log-Cabin Block


I borrowed this gorgeous book out of the library the other week called Vintage-Style Quilts by Flora Roberts and one of the projects in it was a ribbon pin cushion which was constructed on a similar method to a log-cabin block, inspired by the idea, I grabbed some cotton, lots of ribbon and got started. The block is about 8″ square.
The elephant in the middle is from ribbon that was used to trim the curtains in my bedroom and the others are 3/8″ ribbons that I have collected in the last year or so from scrapbooking.

I have no idea what I will do with this block, Mum has suggested making 12 tiny ones to go round the edge and turn it into a cushion cover or to make it the feature of a bag. I have no idea what I will do other than sit and look at it 🙂 Ideas?

In other news
Readymade Magazine now has a blog.
Check out these awesome lights from brightlights-littlecity.
Uncooked – cards that well make you laugh like others have not before.
Lastly, perhaps you may have noticed that I have my very own favicon for my site – favicon 🙂

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plastic string bag

This is one of the crochet items I have been working on in the last day or so, just a super simple bag to make, perfect to do whilst watching TV 🙂 The pattern comes from the book Simple Crochet by Ericka Knight, it uses two balls of plastic string which cost me AU$2.49 each which also means it is super cheap to make 🙂 The variations I did was to add another row of single crochet to the top and slip stitch round the top to give it a nicer finish and to chain 60 for the handles instead of 52. When I make the next one I think I will add a few more rounds to the middle to make it a wee bit longer and also to chain 70 or so for the handles.

String bag

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dude, it’s all about the pink.

Some time after finishing High School in November 2002, I started to become shall we say more girly, in fact a few of the high school girls say that without a doubt I am the most changed since school (I’m cool with that). As I started to realise my girly side, a whole lot more pink started appearing in my life and well yesterday the ultimate piece of pinkness arrived. Can you guess what it is from the picture below? Yep a PINK Motorola V3 Razr, I can still remember when I first saw the post about them over on Shiny Shiny, I was just in utter bliss. I had to get one!! So I started tracking the prices on Ebay (meant I saved about AU$200 on the price) and when the price was right, I hit that little button and bought one 🙂 We are now a little Razr family as Matthew has a Black Razr 🙂
dude, go the pink

This is actually only a fraction of the pink things I own, some clothes are in the wash, my wallets are in hand bags, my bin is on the floor, sheets in the linen cupboard etc etc. What can I say; it’s all about the pink!

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Berry Sour Cream Patty Cakes

Some time back in November I guess, I picked up some frozen Blueberries and Raspberries to make Berry Ice-Cream from Celebrate issue of the Donna Hay magazine (just swirling frozen berries into softened ice-cream and then re-freezing in a pudding cloth).

Then the other day at work I picked up some sour cream from the reduced to clear section, having seen somewhere in the back of mind sour cream muffins.

A google search yesterday gave me these recipes Blueberry Cream Muffins, Sour Cream Blueberry Muffins and Blueberry Sour Cream Muffins, which I used for the basis of my recipe as well as drawing on a Baking Sheet blog post from the other week called Bakery Style Muffins.

Berry Sour Cream Patty Cakes

Ingredients
2 & 1/2 cups plain flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
2 tsp Baking Soda
pinch of salt
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/2 butter (melted)
dash of Vanilla essence
200ml sour cream
dollops of Milk and Buttermilk if needed for achieving consistency
2 cups or so of berries (I used Blueberries and Raspberries)

Method
Preheat oven to 160°C and place patty or muffin papers into patty pan or muffin pans. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl, in a separate bowl combine the egg, sour cream, vanilla and melted butter. Make a well in the dry ingredients bowl and pour in the sour cream mixture and mix together, if mixture is not wet enough add dollops of milk and or butter milk till it is gooey enough to spoon into patty pans. Stir in berries, be sure to do this well so that the berries are evenly distributed through the mixture. Spoon mixture into patty pans so that the mixture is just about at the top of the pan. Cook in oven for 15 minutes or so until skewer comes out clean (muffins will need longer to cook than patty cakes). Makes 40 patty cakes.

Berry Sour Cream Patty Cakes

Now for some notes.

  • Since this recipe makes quite a few patty cakes be sure to either freeze them in small batches or store in the fridge to prevent mould growing in them (cakes etc with fruit especially berries are quite prone to mould if stored at room temp, so eat quick or store in the fridge/freezer.
  • These will be quite airy patty cakes due to the amount of baking powder and baking soda used if you don’t like airy cakes, halve the baking powder and soda amounts.
  • Enjoy with a nice glass of milk 🙂

In other news:

  • On my hook at the moment is this Crochet Cupcake Pincushion.
  • I want one of these – Flame-worked All Glass Crochet Hooks in ruby or opal please (Mum, ideal 21st birthday gift, you have 232 days to purchase one).
  • Mum is just about finished her crocheted bag.
  • This arvo Mum and I went through her old wool to see what I could use to create with and found some knitted goodies which will be fun to felt.

Lastly, this coming Thursday, January 26th is Australia Day so Be Australian, Eat More Lamb (you have to click on that link, though if you aren’t Australian you probably won’t get half the stuff said but still click on it).

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wave back :)

So apparently it is National (does that mean only in the USA? If so when is the Australian one?) scratch that, let us just call it International Delurking Week. I know some of the people who like to poke around here you know those people who possibly know more about you than you know about yourself (family and buds), yeah but back on track, just imagine, you can see me waving at you and saying hello.

What do you do?

  1. Say to yourself is she waving at me? must be that person behind me but I’ll wave back anyway.
  2. Wave back and say Hi Helen.
  3. Ignore the wave and go about your merry way.

What did you answer? Option 2 is the cool one but if you go the others, I will cope, after all I can only wave my hand so many times in one week 🙂

Back to more content driven posting sometime soon.

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home

Mum and I are now home, four days earlier than expected and minus Grandad who flew home from Melbourne on the 10th.

Short Story is:
Grandad knocked a piece of skin off his leg, which resulted in us trekking our way through, under and round Melbourne, visiting a mainly Russian medical centre in South St Kilda, two hospitals in Heidelberg, Tullamarine airport, Spotlight in Box Hill and the house of a dear friend in Glen Waverly who wasn’t home.

It was decided that the best thing for Grandad was that he go home to his own doctor who knows exactly how well and how long Granddad’s skin takes to heal, so he flew home something like 8hrs after we had driven off the ferry from Tasmania that morning. As life goes my aunt who lives across the turf from Grandad also has some family health issues of her own which meant that she may not be able to look after him if he did indeed need a skin graft. With all this under wings, Mum and I embarked on the trip home spending the first night just out of Melbourne in Seymour before driving 1045km yesterday to spend last night in Narrabri and then driving the final 592km home today, arriving home in the early afternoon. We found out halfway through our 1045km jaunt that Granddad’s doctor had said that the wound was fine but would take a couple of weeks to heal, so if we wanted to we could take our time to get home, however we were already way past the Sydney turn-off on the Newell Highway and it would be nice to have some extra time at home before Mum goes back to school next week.

So here we are, at home, sleeping in our own beds again, unpacking our luggage and our treasures, which I will post about in the morning when I get a good photo of my trove 🙂 and preparing to wade through the photos…..

And the for the grand total, 6127km driven in our car between 25/12/2005 at 7:48am and 12/1/2006 at 1:30pm.